The PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund or pork barrel) and the DAP (Disbursement Acceleration Program) plunder and the efforts to subject those behind it to the grinding wheels of justice should be understood in the light of the following circumstances.
1. Based on the midterm development plan, one of the eight millennium development goals (MDGs) is the reduction in population poverty incidence from 26.5 percent (as of 2009) to 14.5 percent, which is indicative of a balanced development in the agricultural, industrial and service sectors of the economy.
2. But the country’s public sector employment of only 1.5 percent of the total population is very much lower than Indonesia’s 2 percent, China’s 5.6 percent and Vietnam’s 5.9 percent. These countries are among the 15 countries whose population poverty incidence ranges from 12.5 percent to 16 percent or an average of 14.5 percent. This set of empirical data is enough basis for the government to enhance rather than streamline the bureaucracy, particularly departments, bureaus, agencies and units that cater to the needs of the still not-yet-fully developed agricultural and industrial sectors.
3. Under President Aquino’s term, the country has experienced an unprecedented significant improvement in the corruption perception index (CPI) by a score of 10 in just less than three years—from 24 in 2010 to 34 in 2012. Such a situation makes possible the attainment of the service sector-driven GDP (Gross Domestic Product) at 7.6 percent, 3.7 percent and 6.6 percent in 2010, 2011 and 2012, respectively, which are higher than those of most countries faced with global recession.
4. The annual plan is funded by the General Appropriations Act, but there is not enough manpower in terms of quantity and quality to implement it. Thus, performance and financial reports have been subjected to “doctoring,” and this has resulted in fund corruption just like the PDAF and Malampaya Fund scams. Government savings from the streamlining of the bureaucracy is far outweighed by financial losses resulting from a lean bureaucracy that only enhances corruption.
The Filipino people should understand that grave corruption and high poverty incidence are systemic in the country as well as in Cambodia, Laos, India, Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, Nicaragua, etc., countries which have lean bureaucracies. Hence, there is only so much that President Aquino can do even if the three branches of government are in harmonious relationship. It is right that the people should be marching not on Ayala but in front of the public officials’ mansions built with stolen public funds (“Where ‘march’ should be,” Letters, 10/12/13). It is both morally and legally right that the House of Representatives and the Senate, whose images have been tarnished by the scams, enact a law that increases the ratio of public sector employment to total population.
—EDMUNDO ENDEREZ,
eenderez@gmail.com